Polish farmers, including rural pensioners, make up a social group which is difficult to define. It is a diversified population, dominated (in numbers) by ‘quasi-farmers’ – those who run small subsistence farms and do not sell their products in the market. This category has many negative, economic, social and psychological features. In their political choices, farmers often choose to support populist agrarian parties. The author, referring to her earlier concept of ‘blocking development’ and ‘moderating changes’, describes the political mechanisms of slowing down the reforms, triggered by a broadly understood community of Polish farmers.
Planned large-scale animal farms are often the subject of protests by local communities due to the nuisance they generate. The active participation of local residents occurs at an early stage of the investment process, namely the proceedings for issuing an environmental decision, because it is at this stage that location and characteristics of the facility are determined. The article analyses 52 cases of proceedings to set the environmental conditions for the construction of animal farms in which there were documented protests of local residents. The aim of the paper is to determine the course of environmental proceedings for animal farms under the influence of residents’ protests, as well as to determine whether environmental conditions are eventually established. The statements of protesting residents are presented by means of references to the category of knowledge in decision-making (Glicken 1999, 2000; Edelenbos 2011). The study showed that despite the binding rule that public opposition cannot be the basis for refusing to set environmental conditions, the protesting residents indirectly influence the final, usually negative, result of the environmental impact assessment. By blocking the realisation of unwanted investments, they have a real impact on the shaping of the local space.
Spatial rent (annuity) makes it possible to estimate the economic value resulting from the use of space for a given type of activity. This article provides calculations of spatial rent in regard to offshore wind energy development and proposes a data-driven approach for optimizing spatial management strategies, ultimately contributing to more informed decision-making processes in marine spatial management. It analyses seven projects that could be developed in the Polish part of the Baltic Sea as part of Poland’s energy transition. The article employs a robust methodology that integrates technoeconomic analysis and financial forecasting to calculate spatial rent by discounting net cash flows. The calculations are carried out for two windiness scenarios, with the results of the weighted average annual energy production ranging from 38.02 GWh/km2 to 40.56 GWh/km2. Such energy production could yield an annual spatial rent of 10.72 million €/km2 to 13.30 million €/km2.
The article was published in Polish in "Studia Regionalne i Lokalne", 3/2004
Theory and empirical literature relate educational quality to two main explanatory factors: family education (intergenerational transfer of human capital) and the quality of schools. The model proposed in this paper is intended to verify the significance of these factors in explaining territorial disparities in educational quality in Poland. The dependent variable is the test score of sixth grade pupils in 2002, averaged at municipality level. The test results prove to be strongly correlated with human capital stock in the municipality`s adult population, which points to the key role of intergenerational transfer for educational quality. On the other hand, the role of school resources (understood as expenditure on education) is rather small. Average test results differ significantly between Poland`s historical divisions. Surprisingly, the more urbanised and relatively affluent regions, like Greater Poland (Wielkopolska), Pomerania (Pomorze) and the so-called Regained Territories (ziemie odzyskane) reveal a substantially lower educational quality than the territories in the east and south-east of the country, generally less developed and with a significant share of agriculture in the economy. These differences can only be partly explained by an additional environmental factor, related to the prevalence of state-owned economy before 1990 (e.g. state farms PGRs) and today`s high structural unemployment. Interestingly, the dissimilarities between the historical regions are not only illustrated by average test score levels, but also by parameters of the determining functions for these results. It can be concluded therefore that location in a historical region has a substantial impact on the flexibility of educational outcomes with regard to different explanatory factors.